This richly layered painting, imagining Edmonia Lewis's journey to Europe, is the first artwork of Michael Susan Kendall to come to auction. Maiden Sea Voyage, Boston to Rome. is one of her six Metaphysical Picturization paintings in which the artist explored the overlooked history of sculptor Edmonia Lewis. They were exhibited in Kendall's first solo exhibition at Andre Wauters's namesake gallery on Madison Avenue in 1978. Another painting from this series Mary Edmonia Lewis, Rome 1867 was acquired by the US Mission to the United Nations that same year. This exciting, significant work painted by the artist at the age of 25 marked the beginning of a promising career. "She is my guiding light." said Kendall, "If it had not been for her, I couldn't have become a painter. She was the fulfillment of my ideals. I aspire not only to be like her but to learn more and more about her."
Kendall's color screenprint version of Mary Edmonia Lewis, Rome 1867 from her Sister Across the Centuries portfolio is in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Artist, educator and art advisor, Michael Susan Kendall was born and raised in Philadelphia and Willingboro, Pennsylvania. She earned a BA in design arts from Drexel University in 1974, and was later honored in 1994 as one of the university's top 100 alumni. She exhibited in New York at the Cinque Gallery, in addition to the Wauters Gallery, in the late 70s. She later began a career in education as an assistant professor in Visual Art at Montclair State University in the 1980s. She also taught at Parsons School of Design and the United Nations International School in New York, and later was an education officer at the Getty Center of Education in Arts in Los Angeles. In the early 1990s, her management company, One World Management, advised clients such as Microsoft, the Library of Congress and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in cultural diversity and issues of equity and access. She passed away from complications of breast cancer at the age of 42. Biographical notes courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
